A Moving Movie Theater to Bring BA to the Neighborhoods

June 6, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Plans were being made for the Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution, Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA to get out everywhere to people in an important neighborhood in our city—-on hundreds of telephone poles, lining fences and construction walls, at bus stops, and on cars. The Revolution Club would be out in this sprawling community–and a request was made to find a way to bring footage from the film BA Speaks: REVOLUTION-NOTHING LESS! to the neighborhood in a special way as part of this.

A team of people came together—people who had worked on bringing projections, sound and big visuals to big public gatherings in the past.  Maybe you have seen the pictures in Revcom.us of projections of BA’s works—quotes—and image up against the walls of buildings or seen the huge Stolen Lives street wide rolling displays.

Creating a movie theater on wheels that could run all day in the neighborhoods—with big sound and a big screen—would be a challenge. For one thing—it would have to be seen in broad daylight when the sun would make the image hard to see–and it would have to be mobile in order to impact the very sprawling neighborhoods in our city–and it would need to run for hours using lots of electricity.

We were able to pull most of the materials together from things we already had. The rest came together because everyone jumped in to solve problems knowing the difference it would make to be able to have this out there in a way that people could really see and hear it.

So here is what the team created and here is how you can do this too.

You will need:

1. One EZ Corner tent—with pipes cut to fit the inside of a truck. You get the corner fixtures from this company - http://www.ezcorners.com/ezcorners.asp?x=1#TentFittings—and they also make these cement block stands that keep the tent weighted down.
2. You use black shade cloth which can be purchased in the garden department of Home Depot or online. You can also purchase 90% shade cloth online. We doubled the cloth so that the cloth walls would provide a lot of shade which is needed if you want to see the TV image during the day—but also would be porous enough so they would be able to deal with wind when the truck moved. We used a sewing machine to create a hem with black canvas cloth to reinforce the edges—and then put grommets in so that this could be attached to the frame with zip ties.
3. A frame was built inside of the bed of the truck using 2' x 4'^’sand a $40.00 tilting flat screen TV mount. This was designed to be strong enough to support the big TV and there are simple braces to make sure things do not move around. This takes some carpenter skills and some basic tools—electric saw and drill. Please note in the photos the way that the wood is cut to use the truck frame to keep everything in place.
4. The Revolution Club made one special request. The sound needed to be very loud and very clear. They wanted people to come out from their homes and the shops—drawn by the powerful voice of BA. We used a really kick ass speaker. In this case it was a 1000 watt QSC 10 K speaker—self powered—that makes everything sound really rich and loud. These have a built in amplifier and mixer so they are really easy to use. Ask someone who deejays where you can get a good speaker to use. It is worth a fundraising effort to have one. Have a good mic with a long cable for live agitation and readings from the proclamation.
5. A really big flat screen TV.
6. And most importantly—you need a good steady and safe power source. We were asked to make sure that this could run continuously for 4 to 6 hours. We ended up having a 3500 watt power inverter professionally installed into the truck. People who install car stereos do this—and you do not want to mess with electricity if you don’t know what you are doing. The truck, with the engine running, becomes a generator.

It is optional—but you can use lattice material on the inside which enables you to staple gun decorations to the walls. Banners can also be attached to the frame of the black box and to the truck itself.

And we got $3.00 cans of flat black spray paint and made sure everything was BLACK—which makes it look very cool.

Oh yeah, you need to have all of your video clips organized and on a player that interfaces with the TV and sound system—make sure you have the right cords and backup cords and someone dedicated to be a deejay. A DVD player or a laptop or a tablet will be needed as well.

There are some photos on the right here.

And please drive carefully—we are using 25 miles an hour as a good speed limit.

Check with your city’s sound codes.  Some cities require permits.

P.S. We can send a drawing of the TV stand if people have difficulty figuring it out. Use 2 x 4 / wood and long Philips headed 3.5 inch construction screws and the carpenter said to make sure you pre-drill the holes before screwing things in.

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